EUGENE, Ore. — It's just painful logic.
The ASU football team lost its first game of the season Saturday, unable to accomplish what it had done with such ease every other week.
Forced to settle for four field goal attempts on its first seven drives of the game, the Sun Devils fell to Oregon 35-23 in Eugene.
"I don't know what changed," ASU junior quarterback Rudy Carpenter said. "We got down there a lot, and we just couldn't punch it into the end zone.
"Eventually, when you play a good team like we did, it's going to cost you the game."
Dennis Erickson's first defeat as ASU's head coach was as significant as his first eight wins with the program.
There were 59,379 fans at Autzen Stadium chanting "overrated" to remind him of just that.
And with a drop to ninth in the BCS rankings, ASU (8-1, 5-1 Pac-10) no longer controls its own fate in the fierce Pac-10 conference.
Oregon now does.
"Obviously we're down," said Carpenter, who threw for 379 yards, two touchdowns and a late interception. "We wanted to have a magical season this year. Guys have to understand we still can."
Despite dominating the time of possession by a 3-to-2 ratio, ASU could only turn its methodical drives into field goal attempts, never reaping the benefits of a tired Oregon defense.
"At certain points, we didn't dominate where we should have dominated," said junior running back Keegan Herring, one half of the tandem trying to replace injured senior Ryan Torain.
When the Sun Devils got down to the three-yard line on their first drive, they did as they would all game long, handing the ball off to sophomore running back Dimitri Nance on three straight plays.
The march, however, ended in three points, not seven.
"Ryan [Torain] would have been a tremendous help tonight," said senior center Mike Pollack, "But you have to work with the guys you've got."
Losing junior right guard Paul Fanaika to an ankle injury couldn't have helped. Erickson also said he believed Carpenter's sprained thumb, which was injured against the week prior against California, bothered him some.
The Duck offense had no qualms scoring touchdowns, quickly and easily.
Oregon led 21-3 before ASU could catch its breath, let alone consider changes to its base 4-3 defense.
Increasing blitz packages later in the game proved to be superfluous.
"I give Oregon credit," Erickson said. "They came out like wildfires early on offense. They just move you up and down the field.
"It's a tough loss. I can't say enough about how hard our players played. Did we play correctly all the time? Obviously not. We made a lot of mistakes on both sides of the football and that's back to me because I'm the coach."
Erickson has said he doesn't manage the defense much during the game but does approve the game plan before it.
Sophomore middle linebacker Mike Nixon didn't think the plan was the problem, rather that ASU was missing assignments in an assignment-based scheme.
"We thought we had a good game plan going in, and I think we did," Nixon said. "But there's a big difference between executing against a scout team and executing against Stewart and Dixon."
Reach the reporter at: andrew.pentis@asu.edu.
